1. Field of Technology
This patent application is directed to the problem of addressing wireless mobile devices that do not have a permanent identifier. The application involves a system and method of assigning a permanent identifier to a wireless mobile device that is used with a wireless network that does not expose a permanent identifier for that device. More specifically, a preferred embodiment of the technology provides a system and method for using an Internet Protocol Version 6 (“IPV6”) address as a transition address mechanism in a wireless network that currently uses an Internet Protocol Version 4 (“IPV4”) address.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are presently several proposals for pushing information to a mobile device in an IP-based wireless network. In these IP-based wireless networks, the mobile devices are not provided with permanent identifiers, but instead are dynamically assigned an IP address from a pool of available addresses. Each time the mobile device makes a network connection, a different IP address is typically assigned to the mobile device. Thus, for services attempting to push information to the particular mobile device, there is no simple way to address the information since the IP address is not permanent. The existing proposals in this domain do not adequately deal with the problems of how to address the mobile device when pushing information to it, and how to bridge the solution to future third-generation (3G) wireless networks. The solutions provided by these proposals involve either creating a proprietary Personal Identifier Number (PIN) for each wireless mobile device, or trying to use a phone number (or similar permanent identifier) of the mobile device to contact it over an alternative communication network, e.g., an SMS over circuit-switched channel.